will the CBS forgeries sink Kerry?

[Cub Driver]

Writes John Fund in the email Political Diary:

**********************************************

CBS isn't saying whether the Kerry campaign or prominent Democrats
were the origin of the highly suspicious documents the network used to
challenge George W. Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard record.
Asked about a Kerry campaign link to the challenged memos, a senior
CBS official told the New York Post: "I can't answer the question."

The American Spectator quoted CBS sources as saying the memos
originated with an opposition research staffer with the Democratic
National Committee. A CBS producer told the Spectator: "There is a
school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps,
figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had
doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more information."

If Democrats did indeed provide the documents, they have much to worry
about. Pat Caddell, a Democratic strategist who served as President
Carter's pollster, told Fox News on Friday "the race is over" if the
documents are proven to be forgeries. "[Democratic officials] have
gotten themselves so involved in this issue [in] the last 24 hours
that somebody's going to, if they're not authentic, they're going to
be blamed for it. It's incredible to me that they've gotten in this."

He said that losing the presidential race would be the least of his
party's problems if Democrats are tied to any forgery scandal: "The
race is over -- and we've got bigger problems than that then."

CBS already has "bigger problems." My sources inside CBS say that Dan
Rather, who reported the "60 Minutes" story based on the memos, looked
"quiet and scared" most of last Friday as the storm over their
authenticity built. He complained that CBS News president Andrew
Heyward couldn't be reached and wasn't being supportive enough of the
story. Meanwhile, callers complaining to CBS were told by
receptionists "we are getting just as many calls of support as those
opposed," which is completely untrue. Almost no supportive calls have
come in. The focus at CBS is on defending the story at all costs, not
on evaluating its merits.

************************************************** ********

(And yes, this is on topic for r.a.m. Recall that it is Bush's Air
National Guard service that is being slimed by these forgeries. For
more, see my daily updates at www.vivabush.org )

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

[Steve R.]

Nice site Dan. :o)
Steve R.


"Cub Driver" > wrote in message
...
>
> Writes John Fund in the email Political Diary:
>
> **********************************************
>
> CBS isn't saying whether the Kerry campaign or prominent Democrats
> were the origin of the highly suspicious documents the network used to
> challenge George W. Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard record.
> Asked about a Kerry campaign link to the challenged memos, a senior
> CBS official told the New York Post: "I can't answer the question."
>
> The American Spectator quoted CBS sources as saying the memos
> originated with an opposition research staffer with the Democratic
> National Committee. A CBS producer told the Spectator: "There is a
> school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps,
> figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had
> doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more information."
>
> If Democrats did indeed provide the documents, they have much to worry
> about. Pat Caddell, a Democratic strategist who served as President
> Carter's pollster, told Fox News on Friday "the race is over" if the
> documents are proven to be forgeries. "[Democratic officials] have
> gotten themselves so involved in this issue [in] the last 24 hours
> that somebody's going to, if they're not authentic, they're going to
> be blamed for it. It's incredible to me that they've gotten in this."
>
> He said that losing the presidential race would be the least of his
> party's problems if Democrats are tied to any forgery scandal: "The
> race is over -- and we've got bigger problems than that then."
>
> CBS already has "bigger problems." My sources inside CBS say that Dan
> Rather, who reported the "60 Minutes" story based on the memos, looked
> "quiet and scared" most of last Friday as the storm over their
> authenticity built. He complained that CBS News president Andrew
> Heyward couldn't be reached and wasn't being supportive enough of the
> story. Meanwhile, callers complaining to CBS were told by
> receptionists "we are getting just as many calls of support as those
> opposed," which is completely untrue. Almost no supportive calls have
> come in. The focus at CBS is on defending the story at all costs, not
> on evaluating its merits.
>
> ************************************************** ********
>
> (And yes, this is on topic for r.a.m. Recall that it is Bush's Air
> National Guard service that is being slimed by these forgeries. For
> more, see my daily updates at www.vivabush.org )
>
> all the best -- Dan Ford
> email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)
>
> The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
> Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

[W. D. Allen Sr.]

Too late! Kerry sunk himself two weeks ago! The CBS cover-up is just more
dirt on his coffin!

When will the DIMocRATs ever learn how to win an election? We can expect
them to once again be crybabies when they lose the upcoming election! But
will they then revert to doing what they were doing that caused them to lose
in the first place.

" A fool is anyone who persists in an action long ago proven wrong!"
- The Pundit's Guru



"Cub Driver" > wrote in message
...
>
> Writes John Fund in the email Political Diary:
>
> **********************************************
>
> CBS isn't saying whether the Kerry campaign or prominent Democrats
> were the origin of the highly suspicious documents the network used to
> challenge George W. Bush's Vietnam-era Air National Guard record.
> Asked about a Kerry campaign link to the challenged memos, a senior
> CBS official told the New York Post: "I can't answer the question."
>
> The American Spectator quoted CBS sources as saying the memos
> originated with an opposition research staffer with the Democratic
> National Committee. A CBS producer told the Spectator: "There is a
> school of thought here that the Kerry people dumped this in our laps,
> figuring we'd do the heavy lifting on the story. That maybe they had
> doubts about these documents but hoped we'd get more information."
>
> If Democrats did indeed provide the documents, they have much to worry
> about. Pat Caddell, a Democratic strategist who served as President
> Carter's pollster, told Fox News on Friday "the race is over" if the
> documents are proven to be forgeries. "[Democratic officials] have
> gotten themselves so involved in this issue [in] the last 24 hours
> that somebody's going to, if they're not authentic, they're going to
> be blamed for it. It's incredible to me that they've gotten in this."
>
> He said that losing the presidential race would be the least of his
> party's problems if Democrats are tied to any forgery scandal: "The
> race is over -- and we've got bigger problems than that then."
>
> CBS already has "bigger problems." My sources inside CBS say that Dan
> Rather, who reported the "60 Minutes" story based on the memos, looked
> "quiet and scared" most of last Friday as the storm over their
> authenticity built. He complained that CBS News president Andrew
> Heyward couldn't be reached and wasn't being supportive enough of the
> story. Meanwhile, callers complaining to CBS were told by
> receptionists "we are getting just as many calls of support as those
> opposed," which is completely untrue. Almost no supportive calls have
> come in. The focus at CBS is on defending the story at all costs, not
> on evaluating its merits.
>
> ************************************************** ********
>
> (And yes, this is on topic for r.a.m. Recall that it is Bush's Air
> National Guard service that is being slimed by these forgeries. For
> more, see my daily updates at www.vivabush.org )
>
> all the best -- Dan Ford
> email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)
>
> The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
> Expedition sailboat charters www.expeditionsail.com

[S. O. Damocles]

Cub Driver wrote:
> Writes John Fund in the email Political Diary:
>
> TANG Typewriter Follies; Wingnuts Wrong
> by Hunter
> Fri Sep 10th, 2004 at 15:37:04 GMT
>
> (From the diaries -- kos)
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/34914/1603
>
> 1. First Claim (LittleGreenFootballs): "The documents can
> be recreated in Microsoft Word".
> What the LGFer did to "prove" this was to type a Microsoft
> Word document in Times New Roman font, and overlay it with the
> original document. As he says:
>
> "Notice that the date lines up perfectly, all the line
> breaks are in the same places, all letters line up with the same letters
> above and below, and the kerning is exactly the same. And I did not
> change a single thing from Word's defaults; margins, type size, tab
> stops, etc. are all using the default settings."
>
> We're going to make this simple.
> First, of course, in order to do this, he first had to
> reduce the document so that the margins were the same, since the original PDF
> distributed by CBS is quite a bit larger. Then he superimposed the two
> documents, such that the margins on all sides lined up.
>
> What he then discovered is that Times New Roman typeface
> is, when viewed on a computer monitor, really, really similar to
> Times New Roman typeface. Or rather, really really similar to a
> typeface that is similar to Times New Roman typeface.
>
> Um, OK then.
>
> You see, a "typeface" doesn't just consist of the shape of
> the letters. It also is a set of rules about the size of the letters in
> different point sizes, the width of those letters, and the spacing between
> them.
> These are all designed in as part of the font, by the
> designer. Since Microsoft Word was designed to include popular and
> very-long-used typefaces, it is hardly a surprise that those typefaces, in
> Microsoft Word, would look similar to, er, themselves, on a
> typewriter or other publishing device. That's the point of typefaces; to have
> a uniform look across all publishing devices. To look the same. You
> could use the same typeface in, for example, OpenOffice, and if it's
> the same font, surprise-surprise, it will look the same.
>
> So kudos on discovering fonts, freeper guy.
>
> Next, however: do they really match up? Well, no. They
> don't.
>
> If you shrink each document to be approximately 400-500
> pixels across, they do indeed look strikingly similar. But that is
> because you are compressing the information they contain to 400-500 pixels
> across. At that size, subtle differences in typeface or letter
> placement simply cannot be detected; the "pixels" are too big. If you
> compare the two documents at a larger size, the differences between them
> are much more striking.
>
> For instance: In the original CBS document, some letters
> "float" above or below the baseline. For example, in the original document,
> lowercase 'e' is very frequently -- but not always -- above
> the baseline. Look at the word "interference", or even "me".
> Typewriters do this; computers don't.
> Granted, if you are comparing a lowercase 'e' that is only
> 10 or 12 pixels high with another lowercase 'e' that is only 10 or 12
> pixels high, you're not going to see such subtleties. That doesn't prove the
> differences aren't there; it just proves you're an idiot, for making them each
> 12 pixels high and then saying "see, they almost match!"
>
> 2. "This typeface -- Times New Roman -- didn't exist in the
> early 1970s."
>
> There are several problems with this theory. First, Times
> New Roman, as a typeface, was invented in 1931. Second, typewriters
> were indeed available with Times New Roman typefaces.
>
> And third, this isn't Times New Roman, at least not the
> Microsoft version.
> It's close. But it's not a match.
>
> For example, the '8' characters are decidedly different.
> The '4's, as viewable on other memos, are completely different; one has
> an open top, the other is closed.
>
> So yes, we have proven that two typefaces that look similar
> to each other are indeed, um, similar. At least when each document is
> shrunk to 400-500 pixels wide... and you ignore some of the
> characters.
>
> 3. "Documents back then didn't have superscripted 'th'
> characters"
>
> That one was easy. Yes, many typewriter models had
> shift-combinations to create 'th', 'nd', and 'rd'. This is most easily proven
> by looking at known-good documents in the Bush records, which indeed have
> superscripted 'th' characters interspersed throughout.
>
> 4. "This document uses proportional spacing, which didn't
> exist in the early 1970s."
>
> Turns out, it did.
> (http://www.etypewriters.com/history.htm) The IBM
> Executive electric typewriter was manufactured in four
> models, A, B, C, and D, starting in 1947, and featured proportional
> spacing. An example of its output is here
> (http://www.microsparc.com/news.htm).
> It was an extremely popular model, and was marketed to
> government agencies.
>
> 5. "OK, fine, but no single machine had proportional
> spacing, 'th' characters, and a font like that one."
>
> No, again. The IBM Executive is probably the most likely
> candidate for this particular memo. There is some confusion about this, so to
> clear up:
> the IBM Selectric, while very popular, did not have
> proportional spacing.
> The Selectric Composer, introduced in 1966, did, and in fact
> could easily have produced these memos, but it was a very expensive machine,
> and not likely to be used for light typing duties.
> The proportional-spacing Executive, on the other hand, had been produced in
various
> configurations since the 1940's, and was quite popular.
>
> (Note: However, it is not immediately clear that the
> Selectrics and Selectric IIs could not in fact emulate "proportional"
> spacing. There is skepticism in some circles that these memos really show
> "proportional" spacing. Looking at the blowups, it appears pretty obvious
> to me that there is, but still researching.)
>
> Did they have a font that looked like Times New Roman?
> Unclear; they apparently were manufactured in a range of configurations,
> and with different available typefaces. Note that these were not
> "typeball" machines, like the Selectrics; they had a normal row of
> keys. But it is worth noting that IBM had what we will call a "close"
> relationship with Times New Roman:
>
> "Courier was originally designed in 1956 by Howard Kettler
> for the revolutionary "golfball" typing head technology IBM was then
> developing for its electric typewriters. (The first
> typewriter to use the technology was
> the IBM Selectric Typewriter that debuted in 1961.) Adrian
> Frutiger had nothing to do with the design, though IBM hired him in the
> late 1960s to design a version of his Univers typeface for the Selectric.
> In the 1960s and 1970s Courier became a mainstay in offices. Consequently,
> when Apple introduced its first Macintosh computer in 1984 it
> anachronistically included Courier among its core fonts. In the early 1990s
> Microsoft, locked in a font format battle with Adobe, hired Monotype
> Typography to design a series of core fonts for Windows 3.1, many of which
were
> intended to mirror those in the Apple core font group. Thus, New
> Courier--lighter and crisper than Courier--was born. (In alphabetized screen
> menus font names are often rearranged for easier access so now we have
> Courier New MT in which the MT stands for Monotype Typography.)
>
> "Courier's vanquisher was Times New Roman, designed in 1931
> by Stanley Morison, Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation,
> with the assistance of draughtsman Victor Lardent. The Times of
> London first used it the following year. Linotype and Intertype quickly
> licensed the design, changing its name for their marketing purposes
> to Times Roman. Times Roman became an original core font for Apple
> in the 1980s and Times New Roman MT became one for Windows in the 1990s.
> (Ironically, at the same time IBM invited Frutiger to adapt
> Univers for the Selectric Typewriter, they asked Morison to do the
> same with Times New Roman.)"
>
http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=%23.%5EG%2F%0A
>
> So, as you can see, both IBM and Microsoft specifically
> obtained the typeface "Times New Roman" from the designers of that font;
> neither was the creator of it. And, as we said before, typeface
> includes not just the "shape" of the letters, but the size and spacing between
> those letters.
>
> One of the differences between the Times New Roman as
> implemented on the IBM machines, as opposed to Microsoft Word? The IBM
> machines apparently had the alternative '4' character that matched
> these memos, while Microsoft Word's TNR does not.
>
> Oops.
>
> Now, would the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron have
> extravagantly purchased typewriters that contained the th superscript
> key? Would the military want or require typewriters with the 'th', 'nd',
> and 'rd' characters? Hmm. Ponder, Ponder. What would the 111th
> need with a th character... I'll leave that to the enterprising among you
> to deduce.
>
> This is not the final word on this, and it is certainly
> possible that any documents are forgeries. But the principle argument of the
> freepers -- that it would be impossible for a TANG office
> in 1972 to produce documents that look like these -- is simply false. Within
> a few days, however, we should know for sure either way; these
> typewriters still have a following, and type samples should be forthcoming.
>
> Update [2004-9-10 14:26:41 by Hunter]: This is from a
> commenter at Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly site:
>
> "Kevin, I worked in the IBM Office Products Division field
> service area fixing typewriters in NYC for over 13 years in the 70s. I
> can tell you that the Model D can produce those documents, not only did it do
> proportional spacing, you could order any font that IBM produced AND
> order keys that had the aftmentioned superscripted "th." Also you
> could order the platen, thats the roller that grabs the paper, in a 54 tooth
> configuration that produced space, space and a half and
> double spacing on the line indexing, this BTW was popular in legal
> offices. The Model D had to be ordered from a IBM salesmen and was not
> something that was a off the shelf item, typical delivery time were 4-6 weeks.
> Also, typewriter keys were changed in the field all the time, its
> not that hard to do. I wish I had saved my service and parts
> replacement manuals to backup this claim but I'm guessing a call to IBM
> with a request for a copy of their font and parts replacement
> manuals would put this to rest ASAP. Posted by: BillG NYC on September
> 10, 2004 at 12:24 PM | PERMALINK"
> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=4669